NASA's Artemis I Orion Spacecraft and The Crescent Moon

NASA's Artemis I Orion Spacecraft and The Crescent Moon

On the eighth day of the Artemis I mission, a camera mounted on one of Orion’s solar arrays captured the spacecraft and the Moon. Orion continues to travel farther away from the Moon as it prepares to enter a distant retrograde orbit. The orbit is “distant” in the sense that it is at a high altitude from the surface of the Moon, and it is “retrograde” because Orion will travel around the Moon opposite the direction the Moon travels around Earth.  

The first in a series of increasingly complex missions, Artemis I is an uncrewed flight test that will provide a foundation for human deep space exploration. It will demonstrate NASA's commitment and capability to extend human existence to the Moon and beyond. Orion is completing a 25-day test of all key systems. It will travel 280,000 miles from Earth, thousands of miles beyond the Moon. Orion will stay in space longer than any ship for astronauts has done without docking to a space station and return home faster and hotter than ever before.

On the Artemis III Mission, NASA will land the first woman and the first person of color on the surface of the Moon, paving the way for a long-term lunar presence and serving as a steppingstone on the way to Mars. 

Learn more about Artemis I at:

https://www.nasa.gov/specials/artemis

https://www.nasa.gov/artemis-1

Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC)

Duration: 3 minutes

Capture Date: Nov. 23, 2022 

Release Date: Nov. 24, 2022

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